On 24/08/2009 18:53, William Loughborough wrote:
> What I am "trying to say" is that accessibility MUST be a fundamental
> concern for design and that in fact, the notion of isolating
> accessibility from other mandatory concerns in design is intolerable.
Sorry, William, but I can't understand the nature of your disagreement
with Steven's post.
Do you agree that the following two claims about web author psychology
are true?
1. Web authors have various goals.
2. Web authors often treat other goals as more important that
accessibility.
If yes, do you agree that the following prediction based on those claims
is reliable?
3. All other things being equal, more web content will be accessible
if actions required to meet those other goals intrinsically produce
accessible content than if additional actions are required to make the
content accessible.
Your emails seem to make the ethical claim that:
4. Web authors are obligated to treat accessibility as an essential
goal.
Do you think this ethical claim changes the truth of the first two
claims or the reliability of the prediction?
Let's say there is language feature, there are two options to allow
authors to make content using that feature accessible, and the options
are equal in all respects except that one option requires additional
author action and the other option requires no author action. In that
scenario, which of the following should the web specification designers
do and why:
(a) Pick a random option.
(b) Pick the option that involves extra author action.
(c) Pick the option that involves no extra author action.
It seems Steven is effectively saying they should pick the option that
involves no extra action, because he accepts the prediction that this
will lead to more content being accessible.
--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis